On Friday Roger Stone, a political consultant who in 2016 publicly supported the Trump campaign, was arrested on criminal charges filed by special counsel Robert Mueller. He has since been released on bail. Stone is indicted (pdf) in five cases for making false statements, one attempt of influencing a witness and an obstruction of a proceeding.

Since May 2017 the former FBI chief Mueller investigates an alleged collusion between Trump, his campaign and something Russian with regards to the 2016 election. No evidence has been produced so far that substantiate any such collusion. The people who fanatically claim that there must have been such a connection are now disappointed. The long awaited Stone indictment was one of their last straws. But there is absolutely nothing in it that hints at any collusion.

All these alleged crimes were committed in relation to an appearance of Stone before a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) investigation.

During the 2016 election Stone publicly claimed that he was in direct communication with Wikileaks and its editor Julian Assange. Steve Bannon, then part of the Trump campaign, asked Stone to ask Wikileaks at what time it would release new batches of emails that had been obtained from the Democratic National Committee. The Trump campaign was naturally interested in using these releases to attack the competing candidate Hillary Clinton.

Wikileaks and Assange denied that they had any relations or communications with Roger Stone. It later turned out that Stone had two contact persons, the New Yorker comedian Randy Credico and the conservative writer Jerome Corsi, who he MIGHT have had some contact or insight into Wikileaks. The indictment says nothing about their relations to Wikileaks.

During his appearance in front of the HPSCI Stone misremembered, contradicted or lied about several details related to his earlier false claim. He also asked Randy Credico to lie to the committee. Those are the only issues the indictment is about. It is about the lies of a notorious liar which became process crimes when he repeated them during an investigation. Stone himself denies emphatically that he committed any crime and promises to defend himself in court.

Nowhere does the indictment say that this has anything to do with the Trump campaign, Russia, Wikileaks or the not existing relations between them.

But some media will not tell you that. The New York Times falsely headlines:

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, revealed on Friday the most direct link yet between parallel efforts by the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks to damage Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election using Democratic Party material stolen by Russians.

There follow 28 paragraphs about the arrest and others issues, five pictures and the above graphic, but no explanation of the supposed link which, according to the indictment, Stone claimed to have but which never existed.

Stone claimed to have contact with Wikileaks. Bannon asked him to ask Wikileaks a questions. Stone had no relation with Wikileaks. He responded with second hand rumors and publicly available information. End of the story.

Mueller found no connection between the Trump campaign and anything Russia to influence the election. He indicted some people of issues unrelated to the elections. Others committed process crimes by lying to the investigation. He also indicted some Russians for money laundering and hacking. But those cases are quite dubious and will anyway never come in front of a court.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi attempts to divert from this disappointing outcome of the Mueller investigation. The Russian influence turned out be nothing. The collusion claim is dead. She is not allowed to blame Hillary Clinton for being the most unlikable candidate who run a lame campaign. Who then can be blamed for the outcome of the 2016 election?

After some deep thinking Pelosi finally found the people who are guilty of winning Trump the election:

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued this statement after Special Counsel Mueller released a seven-count indictment of top Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone, for lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction:

“The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people. ...

Top Trump campaign officials deliberately tried "to influence the 2016 election"? Holy moley! They "subverted the will of the American people" by asking them to vote for Trump? Incredible! The Trump campaign worked to get Trump elected? Isn't that illegal?

“In the face of 37 indictments, the President’s continued actions to undermine the Special Counsel investigation raise the questions: what does Putin have on the President, politically, personally or financially? Why has the Trump Administration continued to discuss pulling the U.S. out of NATO, which would be a massive victory for Putin?

Last week we listed the many good things Trump did for Russia which proves that he is totally under Putin's influence. But that was meant as satire. In fact Trump made dozens of decisions that severely hurt Russia's interests. He lauds NATO and uses it to press other states to buy more U.S. weapons.

Do the Democrats think that spewing such nonsense will attract voters? Or is it a diversion from the fact that they fail to attack Trump's disastrous policies on all but the most minor issues?

"In an indictment unsealed Friday, the special counsel disclosed evidence that a top campaign official in 2016 dispatched Roger J. Stone, a longtime adviser to President Trump, to get information from WikiLeaks about the thousands of hacked Democratic emails."

As of January 25th 2019: No evidence supports the claims of hacked DNC emails. And Wikileaks has denied it got any DNC or Podesta emails from a hacker. (The fact that Podesta's gmail account was phished hardly qualifies as hacking, and doesn't prove the phisher the source that provided Podesta's emails to Wikileaks. Additionally, there's nothing at all that makes the phisher of the Podesta gmail account Russian.)

So yet again the NY Times has posted fake news about Russia-gate.

Toward the end:

"Mr. Stone has changed his story in the months since, saying that he was not actually speaking to Mr. Assange and that he had no direct knowledge that Russians were responsible for the Democratic hacking."

Again, the NY Times has failed to established that Russia hacked the DNC. That "CrowdStrike" says so is not evidence.

So more fake news.

The way this reads: Mueller says someone in camp Trump told Stone to get in contact with Wikileaks, which he didn't manage to do. Even if Stone told Bannon he had.

Hope it's not news to "editors" that Stone isn't honest.

Whereas the Times has added all sorts of events that simply haven't been proven to have occurred. This is incredibly sloppy journalism.
It's a problem for the Times' credibility all that fake news that I cited. Why should anyone believe the NY Times after that?

Then there's the headline which says "Mueller shows..."; it should read "Mueller claims..." Huge difference. The latter is reality based.

""there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to influence the 2016 election..."

Do the Democrats think that spewing such nonsense will attract voters?"

Well, given the fact that Hillary sure never tried to influence the election, unless it be against herself, and the Democrats all think her campaigning was just fine, I guess it is amazing and scandalous to them that Trump actually tried to win.

Homer Simpson once said something like that - "I accuse the telephone company of making that commercial on purpose!"

Are there still some MoA barflies that believes that any of these politicians are attempting to govern for the common good? We and all your children are paying for this ongoing spectacle

We are forced to watch the circus we have instead of the circus we might want until it breaks down completely. I hope what we are seeing are signs that the end is near for "better than others" based Western social structure.

People argue that things will get better if we just get the money out of politics. I call BS and posit that they only real way forward is to get private money out of everything.....it poisons the incentives by which we relate to each other.

Um. Many good points here, but I would not call the spewings of the corporate press "nonsense." Certainly it looks like nonsense on the surface, but it is a brutal, ruthlessly logical propaganda campaign designed to distract and confuse, and to make sure that none of the populist proposals that Trump said in 2016 will come to pass. And it's working.

The old Soviet Union had more classical propaganda, that gave the appearance of logic and decorum. They would actually do what Orwell suggested, and go back and edit old newspapers and books so that everything was logically consistent, although boring. Modern Western propaganda is a very different beast. It cares nothing for logical consistency, it simply uses the mass effect of modern media to scream its message 24/7 from a billion outlets and slam down opposition by raw force. They don't care if the truth is still in print somewhere, they drown it out via pure volume.

The government (e.g. Pelosi) doesn't hesitate to lie to citizens, but if a citizen lies to the government he is punished with a prison term, especially when it becomes political.
Here's what: Venezuela's Maduro should demand in the US "a return to the constitutional order, free and fair elections with international observers and the release of political prisoners." (Actually Pompeo said that about Venezuela.)

I posted the following to yesterday's thread, and it deserves reposting here:

Sorry for this OT interruption, but I just must pass this on as it's quite a rarity for the Whitehouse Spokesperson to utter something true:

"Sarah Sanders asks the correct question after Stone's indictment:

'When will the FBI surround the homes of & arrest, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, James Clapper? People we know have also made false statements [to the FBI] - will the same standard apply?'"

And she could have named a massive list of others deserving the same fate.

That list would need to be bi-partisan and include many members of Trump's administration, including Pompeo, Bolton, and Abrams. IMO, The USA now most certainly qualifies as the biggest Banana Republic to have ever existed and ought to be called The Banana Squash Republic to better reflect its size and immensity of its Banananess.

It is frightening indeed to consider that after months and months, Mueller comes up with some pathetic 'process' crimes of Stone, which have nothing at all to do with Russia or collusion, but can send an armed SWAT team of FBI agents to arrest an old man at 5 in the morning. That it is simply an act of intimidation is more than obvious. How did we get to the point where this partisan political hack, whose only purpose is to destroy Trump, can utilize that kind of force? It really is like a totalitarian state ... the 'knock on the door'.

Just a distraction from Trumps ties with the Russian-Israeli mafia/oligarchs as well as his Chinese business interests . The agent of the pro-China Rothschild (Ross) who bailed out his casinos as his Commerce Secretary heading trade negotiations as Ivanka gets awarded a bunch of trademarks by China (Hwawei and tarrifs just distractions).

Meanwhile Putin offers to mediate between the 2 sides as he sends his Prince like Wagner Group into Venezuela. See how that turns out. A Syria repeat perhaps

Funny how everyone got upset about Khashoggi. China just sentenced 3 more journalists to prison adding to the 60 journalists imprisoned there while the US has disappeared an American born journalist without due process. William Engdhal questioning if Khashoggi really murdered and wonders if he is hiding out somewhere

So many stories, whats real, whats not, nobody knows but the puppet masters.

The Black Matilda pulls up in front of your apartment building followed by that dreaded knock on the door in the dead of night as they take you away to Lubyanka. Did you read about the treatment meted out to the US citizen and PressTV anchorwoman? Of course, what's being done to those trying to apply for asylum is felonious and depraved.

The question is thus begged: Has there been any post-WW2 US administration that has NOT engaged in immoralities, illegalities, lied to Congress and the public that it ought to have been Impeached for? Unfortunately, I believe we all know the answer, and that it's a resounding NO!

I'll tell you what's a diversion: pretending that Trump is the victim of a liberal conspiracy when in fact he is the anointed, chosen Neocon leader correcting Obama's mistakes.

Or is it a diversion from the fact that they fail to attack Trump's disastrous policies on all but the most minor issues?

That's a rhetorical question. You made the point answering your own question, didn't you? If the the U.S. government is a two-headed hydra whose mandate to secure the Empire is second to no other, then why would one head attack it's own body to spite the other head.

Holy moley! They "subverted the will of the American people" by asking them to vote for Trump? Incredible! The Trump campaign worked to get Trump elected? Isn't that illegal?
Wait, there's more!
There were "efforts by the Trump campaign to damage Hillary Clinton!"
Now the effects of this terribly unusual political strategy of damaging one's opponent went undetectable in all the polls, which indicated Hillary a big winner, so we are left with the obvious conclusion that the "basket of deplorables" Trump voters are to blame, subverting the will of the American people who favored the best candidate Hillary. They should be indicted, all 62 million, by a Grand Jury and arrested by FBI swat teams at 5 am!

For me the MSM outlet to read to see the game in play is the Daily Mail.
The Mail did a big splash on the Stone arrest yesterday; today their big Stone story was about his threat to take away Corsi's dog,,,which he didn't do. There were abundant photos of the dog.
They have absolutely nothing.
Can you picture the Muller and co strategy meeting to discuss Next Steps? "OK, what do we have to keep this ball rolling? Silence. "Well, there is that bit about the dog..." Silence. Is that all we've got? Silence. "OK ,let's go with the dog."

You didn't include Stone's laughable email threats against Randy Credico regarding not testifying about communications with Assange, asking he plead the fifth, synchronizing testimony when Credico was called to testify to Congress. According to messages, Stone allegedly invoked "The Godfather," telling Credico to do a "Frank Pentangeli" not to contradict his testimony.

"You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds," Stone wrote. "I'm going to take that dog away from you. Not a f------ thing you can do about it either because you are a weak broke piece of s---." Credico replied, "You don't have a constitutional right to threaten me and especially not threaten my dog ...you crossed a red line." "Rot in hell," Stone wrote back.

“I am so ready. Let’s get it on. Prepare to die c...k sucker,” Stone emailed Credico on April 9

Poor pathetic sap! Anyone who risks their freedom for Trump has to be an idiot.

"..it is a brutal, ruthlessly logical propaganda campaign designed to distract and confuse, and to make sure that none of the populist proposals that Trump said in 2016 will come to pass. And it's working."

No, it is not working.
It is simply that they have run out of ideas and are reduced to saying the same things, acting in the same way (Venezuela is a perfect example) and pretending that everything is going according to plan.

In fact the system is failing, the propaganda convinces nobody and, across the western world, the people are tuning out. Nobody believes a word that the politicians tell them: they have been betrayed by globalisation, living standards are falling and election turnout is declining. The old political parties are dying. The old left-right spectrum is finished. Everything is changed.

People are giving up on politics. That is why, in France, they are now into the twelfth week of protests.
And the protests, led by nobodies, sloughing off politicians, refusing to be trivialised, with great courage, in the face of appalling violence by ruthless cops acting in flagrant violation of the laws. The protests not only get bigger, they get cleverer, more ingeniously organised, better at outmanouevring the terrorist state.
And more than 70% of the French people support them.
Meanwhile the propaganda- "they are fascists"; "they are stupid"; "they don't exist-the movement is crumbling-nothing to see here, folks" - convinces nobody.
Nor does the media blackout, the denial of any state violence, the suggestions of foreign influence, convince anyone.

Those who insist that politics is nothing more than an elaborate spectacle mounted to amuse us by an all powerful, all wise state might as well be trolling for the ruling class.
The system, like the Empire, is in trouble, those battened on to it, like Pelosi, have no idea what to do, except steal as much as they can: none of them has any solutions. They are just going through the motions.
In the distance they can see the Bastille. And the guillotine. And they can't do a damned thing about it.
That is why Trump is surrounded by people like Eliott Abrams and John Bolton, formerly tragedians now playing their old parts strictly for laughs. Not because it is funny but because it is all they know.
And all that they can come up with.

True the US govt is controlled by various heads, but to think they don't have their own agendas and fight among themselves is silly.
Hillary was/is backed by the Deep State, Trump is backed by the Military and Big Business (MBB). They do not have the same goals and after 8 years of Obama and seeing HC as more of the same, the MBB decided to go for the reins.
Remember Obama ridiculing Trump at the Press Club dinner? Obama meant what he said and his utter contempt was and is the DS's opinion of Trump.
The MBB on the other hand see Trump as of their caste and kin and my guess is they recruited him sometime ago to be their candidate when the right time came.
Happily when the time did come, the DS crowd in their arrogance told the MSM to cover him 24/7 seeing him as the perfect foil for Hillary. To their horror he won.
Now the DS wrapped in its usual arrogance think they can take him down. They forget; their every meeting,email, text is known by the Military and therefore by Trump. This is not over; not by a long shot and this is not a charade.
My guess is the DS will try and kill him if he wins again and both Trump and his MBB backers know it.

How many distractive plates can empire have spinning at one time and continue to function without the system collapsing from overburden?

How effective are the spinning plates at distracting from the systemic issues?

Trump tweeted today that:
".......Roger Stone didn’t even work for me anywhere near the Election!"

So does that make that plate spin faster or slower, fall off and break, and why are we focused on this shit while people all over the world are dying because of the God of Mammon hex on Western "civilization"?

I am not being critical of b for posting subject choice but of the zombies in our world that think it is ok to not take personal responsibility for their lives by having mythical faith in others. We need to wake up as a species and take responsibility for the Western social organization structure that is killing us and the world we live in!

@bevin | Jan 26, 2019 8:37:18 PM | 26
In essence, you say that nationalism is failing, and I read elsewhere that globalization is failing. So we are left where we should be left, with individualism, ourselves.
I recommend Henry David Thoreau for that adventure. Walden, specifically. No trust in anyone but ourselves, that'll work. We'll continue to address the failures in nations but only for amusement. The real world is within ourselves.

I'd say it's better than even odds Trump isn't the nominee in 2020. And 20:1 he loses if he is the candidate. In my opinon the ego-driven government shutdown was the last straw. Only if the Democrats make a special effort - say running the evil bit¢h Hillary again - would I give him that one chance in twenty.

Personally, I've got a gut feeling Trump will cook up a face-saving reason to resign, and leave us the dreadful Pence as incumbent. No matter what they think of Trump, I believe most people will find Pence to be worse.

bevin: ... the propaganda fools nobody ... in fact, people are giving up on politics ... the system is failing ... Those who insist that politics is nothing more than an elaborate spectacle mounted to amuse us might as well be trolling for the ruling class

You vastly overstate the frailty of the system . The propaganda fools most people (as many commenters here have described from personal experience) and the Yellow Vests protests are a very recent phenomena. Macron’s response to the protests is telling: doubling down on establishment bullshit and propaganda that attempted to marginalize and discredit the protesters. Why? Because that approach has almost always worked before.

“Elaborate spectacle’ sounds fantastical, but we’ve seen plenty of such specticals in recent times like: the White Helmets, the Steele dossier, the Skripal saga, etc. And then there’s Obama’s legendary duplicity.

frances: Hillary was/is backed by the Deep State, Trump is backed by the Military and Big Business (MBB)

Those division fail when you consider that both of these ‘factions’ see the Russian-Chinese alliance as an existential threat to their NWO plans.

And if these ‘factions’ were really at odds then why has Trump. Fought Deep State and neocon people into his Administration? VP Pence is McCain’s buddy; Gina Haspel is Brennan’s gal; William Barr is close to Mueller, Bolton is a long-time neocon, etc.

Notice how nyt still succeeds in propagandizing the papparazzi of Assange (blame the messenger) while the messages, or even rationale of why Assange's name is put forth at all , is NOT the pink elephant in the room!

NYT here is like those Pixar movies with parallel themes and cultural references for adults vs children in the same storyboard: NYT narratives for the obedient "children" to absorb, like a Maoist self-criticism session opener.

Nick Hanauer, one of the early investors in Amazon wrote an open memo a few years back to “My Fellow Zillionaires.” The memo wad titled, “The Pitchforks Are Coming … for Us Plutocrats”: If we don't do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn't eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.

So its not like the elites dont know whats coming. Since nothing has been done to address these inequalities and they know that either an uprising or police state is coming, or maybe both , I think its probably fair to say many of the elites favor a police state outcome, perhaps justified by an uprising they seem to be trying to incite. Hence their choice of Trump as Discordian in Chief is an apt one

The one thing they may or may not have counted on is Americans have become more voyeurs rather than doers. With fluoride and lithium in the water, legalized pot, opiods, alcohol, vast entertainment choices and rapidly declining testosterone levels over the decades they can probably just declare a police state and nobody will get off the couch let alone put down their smart phone to grab a pitchfork. They would probably need to hit the internet kill switch for that to happen

thanks b.. i'm coming to a place of not having anything to say - much to the relief of some, and especially those who already viewed my comments that way- LOL... it would be funny if it all wasn't so serious... these nutjobs have nukes... i don't want to live in some dr. strangelove world with some crazy able to do some nutso thing that has implications on our planet.. i need to tune into the comedy channel, as these usa politicians ain't doing it for me..

"The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people. It is staggering that the President has chosen to surround himself with people who violated the integrity of our democracy and lied to the FBI and Congress about it ..."https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/12519-4/

Thanks col, that is fascinating. That could rip the wheels off the cart if it succeeds. I can't see Mueller appealing to the Pres or the new head of DOJ and imagine the trench warfare in the Senate if he had to go there.

The Democrats are lost. They used to win elections by doing things that helped their constituents.
Since Terry McAuliffe (in exchange for a governorship) turned them into a lesser branch of the GOP by marinating them in corporate $$$, they have neither wit nor will.
They actively undermine any effective progressives and promote the corrupt and power hungry. Bernie was just the latest in a long line of their victims.
Pelosi is every bit as corrupt and unlikeable as Hillary. She and her family benefit enormously from Nancy's seat in Congress at the expense of those she represents.
Just when you think the Democrats have reached the pinnacle of poor judgement and muddled thinking, they manage to do something even worse, like picking a fight with a nuclear nation that spans 11 time zones and who's war toys actually work.

It doesn't matter if Pelosi was wrong.
The fact is, that the USA is killing and made and make! still suffering lots of innocent people in the world. Make countries instabil with lies and manipulations/propaganda.
Trump is a faggot who propably sucked often the dick of Sheldon Adelson when he was young, just to get a bit power.
I'm not democrat of republican, i am a human being!
There is only right or wrong.

I totally agree Hillary had the backing of the Deep State but unfortunately she had her clock cleaned by the Wide State.

Trump's love of taco bowls, KFC, Big Macs, diet cokes and ice cream for dessert made him more relatable to a broad cross section of the south and midwest, in states which possess a disproportionate share of electoral votes (as well as caloric content) relative to the nation at large.

How Hillary squandered the election given her own noticeable width illustrates the lack of retail fast food political skills which precipitated her downfall.

In my well-paid role as DLC zeitgeist analyst for the Clinton Campaign I suggested larding her speeches in flyover country with references to pizza and pingpong in order to enhance her relatability to the common folk [this idea immediately vetoed by John Podesta in an email you may have read]. I also recommended a wardrobe revision to enhance her width rather than vainly attempting to hide behind a communist-inspired outfit that does nothing for nobody.

IMHO, the Demotards will need to forge a coalition in 2020 of the Deep and Wide State to defeat the forces of the MBB who remain firmly behind Donald Trump.

Pelosi wrongly got carried away after her huge political victory over Trump. The president can't make laws, nor demand laws, rather he executes laws passed by the congress, using funds appropriated by that body. Unfortunately 800,000 people had to suffer through this lesson for Trump where he learned that he can't dictate he can only execute. Even now he says he's not finished with "the wall" so people may have to suffer again.

What is needed is an alternative vision for how society and the economy should function. The problem is that money is the social contract/voucher system, which enables mass societies to function, but we treat it as a commodity to mine from society.
It is a medium of value, not a store. As with the body, blood is the medium and fat is the store, or for cars, roads are the medium and parking lots are the store. We own money like we own the section of road we are on, because its functionality is in its fungibility.
The question is; How do we store money? Well, for one thing, the government borrows up enormous amounts and spends it is ways that support the private sector, but don't compete with it, from welfare to warfare. Where would Wall St be, without those trillions of dollars of government debt serving as the bedrock, to the casinos?
The government doesn't really budget, which is to set priorities and spend according to necessity and ability. Instead they put together enormous bills, add enough pork to get the votes and the president can only pass or veto it.
Remember the "line item veto" proposal of GHW Bush? Obviously it wasn't serious, as it would have taken a great deal of control away from the legislature, but what if they broke these bills into their items, had every legislator assign a percentage value to each item, put them back in order of preference and then the president draws the line? That would let congress and the senate set priorities, while the president is responsible for overall spending. "The buck stops here."
Then there would be far less ability to pad the accounts in every way possible, but capitalism, as we know it, would implode.
As it is now, the end game will be when disaster capitalism/predatory lending come home to roost and all that old debt gets traded for public properties. Warren Buffet buys Yellowstone and Silicon Valley buy the water rights to the Colorado.
What needs to be understood is that while finance serves the entire society, it cannot directly be a function of government, as politicians live and die on the hope they provide and as we experience money as quantified hope, printing more money is a cheap high. The dawn of modern capitalism was when the Rothschilds took over the Royal Treasury from Charles 1, in exchange for his debts and started the Bank of England.
Government, as executive and regulatory, from tribal chiefs and elders, to kings and lords, to presidents and legislatures, is the central nervous system of society, while banking and finance, as the circulation of value around the various components of society, is the heart and arteries. They are separate, because they serve different functions.
That is what is needed. A next step for society. Currently the primary force holding this system together is the assumption that there is no alternative, other than total chaos, or a totalitarian socialism. So they can fight all they want and throw bones to their various sects, but like the monarchists would argue, mob rule could never work, so society was stuck with kings, we are supposed to accept banks as the mediating function of the entire society. We need to learn to store value in tangible assets, like healthy communities and environments, not have atomized cultures, with our bank account as our personal umbilical cord.

When I think U.S. gov, I think of a Zionist-compromised syndicate or racket. Trump got lots of help from Zionist oligarchs, both Russian and American with dual Israeli citizenship, because he was the chosen one. Corruption is always involved in American elections, and then its compromised leaders have the gall to point fingers at Venezuela. Just look at the disparity between the rich and the poor in America! People live in cardboard boxes, tents and under bridges. People despair so much, there's a drug epidemic in America. During the shutdown people had to resort to food stamps and line up at soup kitchens while their leaders were paid and eating well in Congress, and Trump was chowing down gourmet meals in the White House. Then they spend hundreds of billions on defense, invade countries to the tune of trillions and they can't even pay their workers, feed and house the poor, or give everyone healthcare. Elections are a big production lasting up to a year, and people are led to believe their vote counts, but that's not what's been happening. The outcome of the Presidency and also the majority of seats in Congress is pre-determined by the 1% that rule most of the world and this is happening in other Western countries as well and there's always one common denominator, big money hand in hand with Zionism.

reply to Zachary Smith 31
"I'd say it's better than even odds Trump isn't the nominee in 2020. And 20:1 he loses if he is the candidate. In my opinion the ego-driven government shutdown was the last straw. Only if the Democrats make a special effort - say running the evil bit¢h Hillary again - would I give him that one chance in twenty."
Yet despite horrific press he maintains a 40 rating, and not everyone sees the shutdown as his doing, many see it as the Dems preventing him from delivering on his Wall promise.
I believe he will run again and I think the Dems will run Mrs Obama, she is their last best shot. I give him 50/50 if they run her, anyone else, he will win IMO.

reply to: Jackrabbit 30
"frances: ""(point one)Hillary was/is backed by the Deep State, Trump is backed by the Military and Big Business (MBB)"" "Those division fail when you consider that both of these ‘factions’ see the Russian-Chinese alliance as an existential threat to their NWO plans. (point two) And if these ‘factions’ were really at odds then why has Trump. Fought Deep State and neocon people into his Administration?"

point one: The two groups see the Russia/China (RC) issue differently. The DS label RC as "enemies' to justify draconian laws and massive secret police budgets,the countries they destroy in the process are destroyed primarily to rob them. On the backside they do deals; Uranium One is probably just one of many.
re The Military/Big Business (MBB); team M see's RC as rivals to be separated,and once separated weakened. But their BB side wants to open up Russia and China to western investment, to create a trade balance with China, to make both markets for US goods. Think of DS as working from Stalin's ideology and MBB working from Teddy Roosevelt's.
point two: His original team was wiped out,I think he now takes on people who know the ropes and are acceptable to MBB. He let's them run and then, pulls the rug out from under them when it suits him.
Example one: Mattis. He gave him carte blanche, Mattis accomplished nothing, he got rid of him and said we are out of Syria and Afghanistan.
Example two: Bolton. Bolton ran to Israel and Turkey (of all places)to announce that the Syrian withdrawal was off. Trump let him go, make speeches, and then said, no I have a deal with Turkey. End of.
Example three: Pompeo. This one is in the making, watch what happens with Venezuela. I think he will do the same dance he did with NK and Pompeo will have been the "bad guy."
Trump worked successfully with the Mafias and trade unions of the world to get what he wanted, the US govt is pretty much cut from the same cloth IMO.

reply to donkeytale 46
"PMIMHO, the Demotards will need to forge a coalition in 2020 of the Deep and Wide State to defeat the forces of the MBB who remain firmly behind Donald Trump."
True that! I think the "Demotards" are going to go with a secret awesome plan, not telling ANYONE until the last minute and run Michelle Obama. The book and tour and Obama's drippy articles about "my awesome wife" are prepping the ground.
Which might work, but maybe not; Trump now has 50% of the Latino vote behind him so that Dem base is gone. Not sure if the black vote soured on the Obamas but if I can see the possibility of them running her, so can Trump. 2020 will be a race to remember:)

If humanity gets rid of Zionism (another ism) and not global private finance (which exists in reality), will not all of the existing incentives by which our species is organized around the God of Mammon be the same.

I posit that humanity needs to change the Western form of social organization to have totally public finance tools. Will this not neuter this Zionism thing you wail about?

Are you so blinded you cannot see this or are you tools to keep humanity tilting at proxies of our social ills?

"If humanity gets rid of Zionism (another ism) and not global private finance (which exists in reality), will not all of the existing incentives by which our species is organized around the God of Mammon be the same."

Agreed on the need to abolish Mammon, but I don't see how global finance (nominally "private" or "public", same thing - the corporate state is a single system; the government creates corporations in the first place, and the oligopoly sectors depend completely on government subsidies and thuggery, otherwise they'd all collapse within days) can be separated from the commodity production-consumption civilization as such. The whole thing is a purely destructive tyranny.

(Not to mention the fact that the ongoing existence of this system is mutually exclusive with any meaningful action to avert the worst of the ecological crisis this system intrinsically drives and which portends collective suicide in the near future.)

And yes, yes of course Black America still loves the Obamas. Americans of all races, creeds and gender identities still love the Obamas! They sing, they dance, they crack jokes, offer wise lifestyle advice, build eclectic musical playlists, grow vegetables in public gardens. What's not to love?

Only Oprah [maybe] garners higher scores across all demographics. I'll bet there are even elderly white Republican women who still [secretly] tune in Oprah every chance they get.

The outrage makes much more sense when you accept that Trump's role in the election spectacle was to try to lose (convincingly). Trump was supposed to take a dive and throw the fight. From where I was watching the fight it certainly looked like Trump was trying to lose, and in such a way as to make it look like a "Yuuuge!" victory for neoliberal identity politics and political correctness.

Why did Team Blue deliberately blow the elections for Senate and Congress, giving those to the Red Team? Because they were supposed to get the Executive branch. With that kind of "balance" neither team needs to make good on any campaign promises.

Why did Trump not have a transition team assembled on election night? Because he wasn't supposed to win anyway.

Why were establishment figures who were in on the fix so surprised by the election results? People like James Crapper are not professional actors and cannot convincingly fake that level of astonishment.

Why was the Steele dossier so shabby and obviously bogus? Because it was not supposed to be looked at too closely. Had Clinton won she would have magnanimously closed the "collusion" investigation to show good sportsmanship to the loser. With Trump the victor however, that was no longer an option. A shabby fake dossier that wasn't designed to stand up to close scrutiny suddenly had to be accounted for.

Why would Skripal (assuming he was Steele's source) need to be silenced? Because it is one thing to be associated with a fake dossier that will fade from the news cycle shortly after the elections. It is another thing entirely to have been involved in authoring a fake dossier that was designed to attack someone who just became PotUS. Skripal likely lacked the nerves to stay silent about something that serious, and had to be disappeared.

Why have the dossier at all? It was "insurance" in case Trump's popularity accidentally surged before November 9. The dossier would be used to "tune" public preferences if it looked like Trump was too close. The mass media had the difficult task of building Trump up enough to win the primaries and look at least a little competitive so the election farce would be believable, but not so much that he might beat the one who was chosen to win. To make it easier than walking a fine line they instead just collected some feces ammunition to throw at Trump if things looked to be getting out of hand.

Furthermore, note that the corporate establishment collusion on these election spectacles goes much wider than most people suspect. Take a look at the big budget movies that Hollywood has released since the elections. Note that many of these movies began production before the elections. It is painfully obvious that many of these big corporate productions were meant to synergize with the historic "First Woman President" event. This synergy was intended to "lock in" politically correct self-censorship among the masses, which would make it easier for the corporate elites to control the narratives that people feel comfortable discussing on social media. This would have neutered the threat to capitalism posed by social media without having to resort to profit-harming actual censorship like they ended up starting to do.

Yes, the elections were rigged. Yes, Trump was, to a degree, in on the fix (details were available on a need-to-know basis and he didn't need to know them to play his part). But no, the establishment/deep state/corporate elites/whatever did not at all intend for Trump to win.

Not that this isn’t already known, but “it’s nice to have your reality confirmed”.

I live in California. A couple of years ago,along with many others, I was in a messy situation with a state agency that receives federal funds. My local newspaper was writing articles about this statewide situation. In talking to them, they suggested I contact my state government representatives. I asked about contacting Pelosi’s office as she is my Senator. Their response:

On the positive side this looks like it wants to do business without causing destruction which is the trend we're seeing.

This seems also somewhat out of necessity as the US is no longer a unipolar player.

Corporate America is not used to playing fair but the fact that it can no longer easily dislodge a more socialist oriented country like Venezuela which is attempting to recognize the poorer groups in society is a good sign.

Like you, many people believe that the elections were rigged for Hillary, the establishment darling that is also loved by the Deep State. But why would Hillary need their support if she was going to win fairly?

We are asked to believe that Hillary suffered from "Russian meddling" but that doesn't add up. IF the Russians were determined to "mettle" in the election, why did they do so little? They took the serious step of hacking the DNC yet only spent $20,000 on Facebook ads?

The dossier is viewed as evidence of MI6 involvement on Hillary's behalf. But the Trump campaign's use of Cambridge Analytica is conveniently overlooked. We now know that Facebook provided similar access to dozens of other companies. Why didn't the campaign use an American company? (note: CIA often uses MI6 for US domestic ops)

The setting up of Wikileaks as a 'Russian agent' is also conveniently ignored. As is the set up of Flynn.

I address each of your questions below.

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Why did Team Blue deliberately blow the elections for Senate and Congress? Because they were supposed to get the Executive branch.

You are failing to account for the political phenomena known as "coat tails". 'Down ballot' races benefit from the voter turnout that a winning headliner brings to the polls.

Also, Hillary's poor campaigning had unnecessarily alienated many voters on the left and the right. That meant a lower Democratic turnout and a higher Republican one.

=Why did Trump not have a transition team assembled on election night? Because he wasn't supposed to win anyway.

Have you forgotten the "Never Trump"-ers? Trump was hated by much of the Republican establishment so many serious candidates would not want to tarnish their careers by announcing that they would be willing to work for Trump.

Note: In the 'conspiracy theory' that I've put forward, very few people would have known that Trump was supposed to win. And Trump's 'populist' credentials were meant to be burnished by his underdog/come-from-behind win against the establishment.

=Why were establishment figures who were in on the fix so surprised by the election results? People like James Crapper are not professional actors ...
Well, Clapper had no problem lying convincingly to Congress.

Would you expect that they would fix the election and then NOT look surprised?

=Why was the Steele dossier so shabby and obviously bogus? Because it was not supposed to be looked at too closely. Had Clinton won she would have magnanimously closed the "collusion" investigation to show good sportsmanship to the loser. With Trump the victor however, that was no longer an option.

Why not? Why not just bury the dossier? It was an embarrassment. Simply telling the few that had seen the dossier that the evidence was not credible (which we now know to true!) would be enough to squash it. Instead, they went the other way, making it public and asserting that 17 intelligence agencies believed that the Russians had meddled.

=Why would Skripal ... need to be silenced? ... It is another thing entirely to have been involved in authoring a fake dossier that was designed to attack someone who just became PotUS.

Well, if they had simply buried the dossier after the election, they wouldn't have had that problem.

Occam's razor says that the dossier was used as intended.

=Why have the dossier at all? It was "insurance" in case Trump's popularity accidentally surged before November 9.

1) Trump's electoral college-focused strategy was well know. Trump wasn't trying to win a popularity contest, he was trying to win the electoral college.

2) Why wasn't the insurance used then? Especially given Hillary's poor campaigning? Don't forget, we are told that Hillary desperately wanted to be the first women President. Why not pull out all the stops?

3) We are told that several media outlets refused to report on information contained in the dossier. Does that sound credible given the media's lover for Hillary and hate for Trump?

=Furthermore, note that the corporate establishment collusion on these election spectacles goes much wider... Take a look at the big budget movies that Hollywood has released since the elections.
The media portrayed Hillary as the certain winner. Thus, it's no surprise that Hollywood expected that outcome.

Reply to William Gruff 58
Really interesting points, some thoughts:
“ Trump was supposed to take a dive and throw the fight. From where I was watching the fight it certainly looked like Trump was trying to lose.” How so? He filled stadium after stadium, ran like he wanted the job IMO
“Why did Team Blue deliberately blow the elections for Senate and Congress”. These people are oblivious, that is why they lost, they didn’t deliberately do anything. They wanted to win, they didn’t.
“Why did Trump not have a transition team assembled on election night?” Because he felt the Clinton machine had it locked up, just like the press did.
“Why were establishment figures who were in on the fix so surprised by the election results?” Have you read that the votes in CA equaled 114% of eligible voters, THAT is why they thought she would win, she cheats.
“Why was the Steele dossier so shabby and obviously bogus? Because it was not supposed to be looked at too closely. Had Clinton won she would have magnanimously closed the "collusion" investigation to show good sportsmanship to the loser. With Trump the victor however, that was no longer an option.” Yep.
“Why would Skripal (assuming he was Steele's source) need to be silenced?” Maybe because he wanted more money for being the “Russian source” Remember the red bag at the scene until there wasn’t? I think that was his bribe money but it was laced with something, Angel Dust possibly, so they could pick him up and shut him up.
“Take a look at the big budget movies… intended to "lock in" politically correct self-censorship among the masses, which would make it easier for the corporate elites to control the narratives..” I think this is part of the UN Agenda 21, and the Dems are all about that.
“..the elections were rigged.” Yep, but not enough.
“.. the establishment/deep state/corporate elites/whatever did not at all intend for Trump to win.” Very true and they want to make damn sure it doesn’t happen again that someone other than themselves gets the job.

reply to donkeytale 57
Thanks:) assuming I am right I think she is there last best shot, I hope Trump is going to hang Obama with the MI6 and Presidential Briefings well before they announce her as their candidate. I think the Dems will want to hold back as long as possible to get a WOW factor when they do announce.She isn't qualified, but when did that ever stop them.

reply to financial matters 60
Thanks:) Let's pray I am right, he will lose if he starts a war IMO

"But this great result was not merely the triumph of a particular city; it was the triumph of an ideal and a way of life. Freedom had defeated despotism, democracy had defeated kings, hardy poverty had defeated all the gold of the East. The men who fought of their free will for home and country had proved more lasting fighters than the conscripts who were kept in the lines by fear of tortures and beheadings and impalements. Above all "virtue," as the Greeks called it, or "virtue" and "wisdom" together, had shown their power. The words raise a smile in us; indeed, our words do not properly correspond with the Greek, because we can not get our ideas simple enough. "Virtue"[Pg 39] is what makes a man, or anything else, good; it is the quality of a good soldier, a good general, a good citizen, a good bootmaker, a good horse or almost a good sword. And "wisdom" is that by which a man knows how to do things—to use a spear, or a tool, to think and speak and write, to do figures and history and geometry, to advise and convince his fellow-citizens. All these great forces moved, or so it seemed at the time, in the same direction; and probably it was hardly felt as a dangerous difference when many people preferred to say that it was "piety" that had won in the war against "impiety," and that the Persians had been destroyed because, being monotheists, they had denied the Gods. No doubt "piety," properly understood, was a kind of "wisdom." Let us take a few passages from the old Ionian historian, Herodotus, to illustrate what the feeling for Athens was in Euripides' youth."

Back in the day, things like society, religion, politics, economics, science, etc. all blended together and monotheism was effectively synonymous with despotism, as polytheism was with democracy and pantheism with republicanism.
The logical fallacy of monotheism is that a spiritual absolute, source of consciousness, would be that essence of sentience bubbling up through all of life, not an ideal of wisdom and judgment from which we have fallen. More the new born, than the wise old man. Consciousness, than the thoughts generated. The Ancients had diverse religious beliefs, that naturally accorded with their view on nature and social systems. Yet our western religious paradigm is of this top down, father figure lawgiver and his Ten Commandments. How has that worked out since? Divine Right of Kings was the effective political model for much of the succeeding 1800 years. The Catholic Church has been in decline since Martin Luther and now seems a nest of pedophiles. The Islamists haven't exactly presented examples of divine wisdom and currently seem controlled by monolithic psychotics. The Jews finally got their country back, one they lost for dissing Roman pantheism, and seem bent on spiraling into a tribal absolute.
Maybe, if people really want to understand nature, they shouldn't just focus on the surface spats, but on the forces driving them. We really are not as evolved as we assume we are. It's just that we don't have a lot of perspective on the situation.

Now, I like to break it down simply as to how they did this. They had Plan A, Plan B and Plan C, and the joke of the whole thing, and when I say joke I don't mean funny, I mean a tragic joke, is it wasn't known as Plan A, Plan B and Plan C; you know why? They thought Plan A was just fine, so it was just the plan. When Plan A failed they had to move on to Plan B and then Plan C was just the cleanup operation. Here's how this whole thing starts against Donald Trump.
. . .
The first plan they do to hit the Trump team, folks, is they learn to manipulate things about queries in the NSA database.

But there's a good guy in this, there's a white hat, somebody in the government sniffs this thing out. That's why I tell you, this wasn't Plan A, this was the plan. They were going to unmask people, wiretap people and they were going to query this NSA database and get all the information they needed about the Trump team. But somebody smells a problem, and he's not having it, and he's the white hat, he's the good guy in this story, and it's Mike Rogers of the NSA.

Rogers smells a rat.

It's like so about 10 days after the election of Donald Trump, someone goes up to visit Donald Trump in Trump Tower. Who visits him? Mike Rogers.

and what happens the very next day? Donald Trump evacuates Trump Tower and goes to Bedminster, New Jersey to never return for another meeting.

Rogers has this meeting, Trump evacuates Trump Tower. The very next day the Obama administration comes out and calls for somebody to be fired; who's that somebody? Mike Rogers.

They move on to Plan B; what's Plan B? They realize Rogers is onto them. They're like hey folks, we better ease up on the unmasking and the tapping into the database, people are getting caught, this is probably not good, we're leaving a massive paper trail, and what if we lose, right? They move on to Plan B. Plan B's a cross fire hurricane. They say well, listen, if we can't spy on them illegally let's just spy on them legally. We have this beautiful thing called the FISA Court where we can walk into the FISA Court, we can get a warrant on somebody and when you get a warrant on somebody in the Trump team they have this beautiful thing for the Obama administration called the two hop rule. Well, it's for everyone, it's for Obama.

Meaning, if I spy on you, and you're a member of the Trump team, I can hop to everybody you emailed and then everybody they emailed. So basically all I need to do is get a FISA warrant on the guy cleaning the floors in Trump Tower, and I've got everyone.

The problem with the FISA Court, unlike the unmaskings and the tapping into the database is they had to produce actual evidence in front of a judge.

So what does the FBI and the State Department and the DOJ do? They say well, we don't really have any evidence, let's just make it up. We've got this guy we worked with in the past, this guy Christopher Steele.

the dossier was already written back on April 17th of 2007. You go: what do you mean, I don't get it. You mean 2017, right? No, no, no, no, no, I didn't get that wrong.

It's written right here in the Wall Street Journal, on April 17, 2007. Who's the author of this critical Wall Street Journal piece? Glen Simpson and Mary Jacobi, his wife. Glen Simpson, the purveyor of Fusion GPS. The article is called, How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington.

They're in a lot of trouble. Because they realize the dossier in and of itself is crap and a lot of people at the Bureau know it. They need to buttress it with some stuff to make it a little harder. Now is where the Michael Cohen story comes in, Trump's lawyer.

In the dossier is a very specific allegation, right? That Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, went over to Prague to set up this whole information exchange with the Russians, right? Well, what's the problem? Michael Cohen had never been to Prague, and his passport proved it.

So they have to move on to Plan C. Plan C, I call it Clean Up on Aisle 4. Now they're in trouble.

Who also quits? John Carlin. Who's John Carlin? He's the head of the Department of Justice National Security Division, the final division in the Department of Justice to put their John Hancock on the FISA warrant. He quits right after the election. Who did John Carlin work for? Now clean up on Aisle 4 is going to start to make sense. Who did John Carlin work for before he got there in the DOJ? He's Bob Mueller's chief of staff. He was Bob Mueller's chief of staff. Now does Bob Mueller make sense? Clean up Aisle 4, get the mops out.

Different Russian conspirologists for quite a while - before election nwere over - claimed that

1. Trump was coerced to become a useful looser-challenger for the staged elections. And that was the main, if not the only, vehicle Hillary used to get elected. When Trump anti-rating proved not enough - she just had no any other point to make for her case.

Then he either saw it as an opportunity to play big, or he did not like being coerced and wanted to slap Hillary for it, or he was hijacked and coerced by a competing special interests group, that waited in a shadow for Team Hillary to "clear the road" by removing all other competitors but Trump and Clinton.

2. It is statistically proven that USA MSM were working for Trump (or some said TV artist Trump tricked USA MSM to do it) by pressing him as the only alternative to Hillary and focusing their news and talk shows on Trump. While they were all into "Trump is baaaad", from commercials POV it was all about "brand recognition" and making "Trump" brand to be pronounced "on every street corner"

THE ARTICLE ON STONES INDICTMENT! FIRST STONE IS A LIAR AND SCAM ARTIST AND UNDERSTUDY OF ROY COHN. STEIN/STONE IS BUT A SHADOW OF COHN WHO WAS THE REAL MEYER LANSKY. BUT PELOSI IS PLAYING OFF THE FACT THAT THE AMERICAN PUBLIC CANNOT READ AND FOR SURE CANNOT ANALYSE. SO HER STATEMENT WILL STAND. BUT ONLY TO THE MOST IGNORANT OF THE DEMOS BASE.THE FACT THAT THE WORLD SEE THIS EMBARRASSING PICTURE OF AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IS SURE TO HURT IN THE LONG RUN. BUT IF WE PLAY OUR CARDS, RIGHT WE WHO ARE AGAINST THE ZIONIST NEOCON AGENDA CAN USE IT TO KEEP THE WORLD SEEING WHAT A CRIMINAL BUNCH AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IS.